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| Iraq |
| The Way of the REMF |
| 2008-01-29 |
| You can tell peace is coming to Iraq, because the U.S. combat troops are having more hostile encounters with non-combat soldiers. You can usually tell who is who. The grunts (combat types) are skinnier and less well turned out (hair too long, shave not too recent, slouching). The plumper, sharply dressed, and higher ranking non-combat NCO will berate the grunt for his poor appearance. When there was a lot of fighting going on, the infantry guy would scare the other guy away, with a few choice words and a menacing look. Not so much, anymore. More and more non-combat troops are coming out of their well appointed (and well defended) bases, and ragging on the grunts. The fighting troops don't like it, and are beginning to wonder out loud what all these "combat support" people actually do, if they have so much time to gain weight, and harass the men who made Iraq safe for this kind of crap. The combat support troops do have less to do now that there is much less combat. Less fuel and ammo has to be moved. Fewer casualties have to be taken care of. A lot less equipment to repair or replace. Combat support troops are mainly concerned with bringing order to disorder, and now the grunts need to be shaped up. The combat troops create disorder. They "break things and kill people." Now that the two species have more time to mingle, those differences are causing friction. It's bad for morale, but it's also a sign that peace is breaking out. And thus it was, from the time of the Roman legions. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #6 Read some of Bill Mauldin's cartooms from WWII, or his memoirs. |
| Posted by: Eric Jablow 2008-01-29 21:44 |
| #5 An update. I mentioned this today, and was mildly rebuked by an old soldier, who said that "Properly speaking, this has been going on since the army of Ramses II." |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-01-29 20:23 |
| #4 I'll bet it was, Joe. They're pretty attention-grabbing. |
| Posted by: lotp 2008-01-29 18:55 |
| #3 IIRC, ANDERSEN AFB during that period of Vietnam - as did other AFB's and select Army-Marine facils - did experiment wid having TWO EXECUTIVE OFICERS UNDER ONE BASE CO, ONE XO FOR BASE OPERS WHILE ANOTHER XO FOR GENER "DISCIPLINE". complete wid support Base Staffs + parallel Unit-specific levels. By most accounts, the latter XO, etc. was due to the chaos in military order wrought by the social revolution = so-called "counterrevolution" back on the mainland. Also IIRC, the USAF-DOD wanted to base more B52's here in suppor of Vietnam opers, and conducted test evaluations at old NW Field [WW2 B29 base] down the road from Andersen, + the former NAS Agana [Brewer Field/Tiyan]. IT WAS A SIGHT TO SEE USAF BUFFS = "SHARKTAILS", C130's, etal. SUDDENLY APPEAR ON A US NAVAL AIRFIELD, GIANT BLACK-TAILED PLANES NEXT TO SMALLER WHITE ONES. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-01-29 17:13 |
| #2 It's the deference between 'military' and 'militaristic', form over substance. Again, and again, the military men have seen themselves hurled into war by ambitions, passions, and blunders of civilian governments, almost wholly uninformed as to the limits of their military potentials and almost recklessly indifferent to the military requirements of the wars they let loose. Aware that they may again be thrown by civilians into an unforeseen conflict, perhaps with a foe they have not envisaged, these realistic military men find themselves unable to do anything save demand all the men, guns, and supplies they can possibly wring from the civilians, in the hope that they may be prepared or half prepared for whatever may befall them. In so doing they inevitably find themselves associated with militaristic military men who demand all they can get merely for the sake of having it without reference to ends. Vagts, Alfred, History of Militarism, rev. 1959, Free Press, NY, pp 33-34. Or as they used to say when I shared time with the legion - an Army which can parade can't fight and an Army which can fight can't parade. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-01-29 16:00 |
| #1 Some things (particularly REMFs) never change. After the bombing halt in 1973, there was a positive explosion of colonels available to "reinstill military discipline" in the B-52 crews at Anderson AFB and Utapao RTNB. We had haircut colonels, shoe shine colonels, staff officers of every shape and variety on the hunt for hapless aircrew. One particularly clueless colonel, apparently unaware that aircrew sometimes wore other than regulation nametags, rampaged around Anderson one afternoon trying to find the aircraft commander responsible for the Lt. SAM UPLINK who had told him to do something anatomically improbable with himself when chastised about the lack of shine on his boots. (For those of you too young to remember, the SAM uplink was the guidance signal for SA-2 surface to air missiles and only showed up on your receiver when you were the target of unpleasantness. |
| Posted by: RWV 2008-01-29 15:32 |